For many industries, the transition away from fossil fuels will be somewhat fragmented, and instead of there being a perfect one-size-fits-all replacement, there will be a wide range of different sustainable fuel sources, each of which has different production and safe storage needs.
The transportation sector is moving at different speeds and in different directions towards transitioning away from fossil fuels, and one of the key components to the future of fuel is drop-in biofuels.
They play a vital role alongside electrofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and high-capacity batteries in keeping the world moving, but why are they so important, why does effective safe storage matter, and how does their use signify a final, permanent transition away from fossil fuels?
What Are Drop-In Biofuels?
A biofuel is a fuel derived from a sustainable biological source, which typically consists of plants, algae and other fast-growing flora that can be processed into a fuel that can be burned the same way a fossil fuel such as oil, petrol or diesel can.
Biofuels are, by themselves, not new in the slightest, with Brazil being the first country to widely cultivate crops for biofuel as a means of avoiding the serious shortages caused by the 1970s Oil Crisis.
However, Brazilian cars needed to be designed specifically to work with different fuel blends, and the flex-fuel type of car resulted in attempts to reduce the complexity and broken engines that sometimes resulted from using the wrong fuel or mix of fuel at the wrong time.
The ideal solution is a drop-in biofuel, which is a sustainable biofuel which is completely compatible with an existing fuel to the point that it could be used either as part of a blend or as a complete substitute.
There are many examples of successes involving drop-in biofuels, including in motorsport and transportation, which provide a degree of promise that the entire sector could potentially be decarbonised.
Why Are Drop-In Biofuels Vital?
There are two main solutions that drop-in fuels provide; they allow for immediate sustainability gains without having to fundamentally change industries in the name of energy transition, and they can provide energy for certain types of vehicles which cannot be powered through electrical energy alone.
There are a lot of potential alternative fuels with a low, zero or even negative carbon footprint, including solar power, hydrogen fuel cells and battery-electric motors, but not all of these can easily be used in certain industries.
The battery-electric vehicle (BEV) is quickly increasing in popularity amongst consumer vehicles and small vans, because the charging infrastructure is in place to ensure that motorists can drive commutable distances without running out of electricity.
However, the same technology could not necessarily be used for air transportation, as the sheer weight of the batteries required for the distances required would be incredibly impractical if not impossible, due to the weight, weight distribution, atmospheric conditions and additional forces such as air resistance and gravity.
It is similarly impractical for use in shipping due to the scale involved in transportation. Container ships often travel thousands of miles, which is orders of magnitude beyond the longest ranges of consumer electric cars on the market, even discounting the effects of water resistance and significantly higher loads than a car.
Which Industries Have Benefited From Drop-In Biofuels
There have been many remarkable successes in terms of energy transition, and many others are at an impressive stage of their energy transition journey.
Motorsport is an unusual industry with regard to biofuels, and whilst electric racing series exist, they take a very different form from the lines of IndyCar, Formula 1 and the World Endurance Championship.
All three of these series have transitioned to biofuels in order to ensure that motorsport can remain sustainable and viable when using petrol and diesel no longer is.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is shipping. Container vessels famously use a lot of fuel, typically in the form of heavy fuel oils, so for a very long time, it was believed that the hardest transportation sector to transition to biofuels would be freight shipping.
In 2025, that perception was remarkably broken when a commercial ship used a 20 per cent biofuel mix made via a carbon-negative process. Whilst it was not a complete transition away from fossil fuels, it was far greater progress than had been initially predicted, where the ideal goal was simply to stop using heavy oil.
Aviation is another sector that has benefited from biofuels, something that is somewhat remarkable given that the various standard jet fuels need to have extremely low freezing points to ensure they can be used at typical cruising altitudes.
